


Every Little Thing, Is(n't) Gonna Be Alright

by polkadotPotter



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Allison x Luther who?? i literally don't know her, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apocalypse doesn't happen, Canon Divergence, Good Brother Diego Hargreeves, Good Brother Klaus Hargreeves, I promise, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, M/M, No Incest, Not Luther friendly, Protective Diego Hargreeves, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, and there are some that both take place within like 2 hours, because i make it blatantly obvious, because they save Vanya from Luther, can you tell who my favorite characters are, its hating luther hours, no beta we die like me, not in MY good christian ao3, some of the events are spread really far apart, the title is misleading there is a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-11-29 03:45:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18217745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polkadotPotter/pseuds/polkadotPotter
Summary: "Klaus needs help sometimes. Actually, scratch that- he needs help all the goddamn time, because somehow he manages to continuously get himself into these less-than-desirable situations.What sucks even more than the shit that happens to him is the fact that nobody is ever there to help him."ORFive times when no one was there to help Klaus, plus the one time that (most) of his siblings were.





	Every Little Thing, Is(n't) Gonna Be Alright

**1.**

His fingers burned. Like, _burned,_ burned. 

Klaus knew it was because the skin had been rubbed off, bit by bit. This was earlier, when he'd scrabbled and clawed and pounded against the harsh stone walls of the mausoleum, begging, screaming, for someone to let him out. The skin of his hands had caught on the rock, peeled off, and now that he wasn't so focused on getting out, there was a hot, itchy ache where the musty air hit his wounds. 

Now he was in the corner. His knobbly knees tucked into his chest, elbows between his thighs and his stomach, chin resting in the divot between his pressed-together legs, neck hunched so low that it hurt. Klaus had always been small, and now he was impossibly small, a spindly tangle of trembling limbs in the corner of a dark room. He was so small, small enough that the eyes of any living person would have passed right over him had they been looking, yet he was putting all of his energy into making himself look smaller, feel smaller, trying so incredibly hard just to wish himself into nonexistence or invisibility.

Because the dead could _still_ see him.

They shouted at him, because they loved shouting. They just fucking _loved_ attention. _Klaus, look at me, Klaus Klaus Klaus, help me, I'm here, I know you can see me, KLAUS, KLAUSKLAUS, why won't you look at me, bastard, brat, waste, klausklausklaus why won't you help me?_ They clawed at him. They couldn't touch him, but somehow it still hurt. The cold that rushed through him every time the dead fell into him was almost more painful.

He was still sobbing, but he couldn't feel it anymore. His body was simply going through the motions. Tears streamed down his face. His chest heaved. His lip quivered. He was hardly aware of any of it. 

Every time he thought he couldn't bear even one second more, he somehow did, and his heart grew smaller in his chest. He was so terrified. So scared. This colossal fear, pressing in at him from all sides, choking him, scratching him, scratching himself, he couldn't breathe, it was so so so dark and why was it that even in the dark he could see their faces, floating near him, approaching him, yelling and screaming and his hands were in his hair and he screwed his eyes shut and he

couldn't breathe-

The dead wanted his help.

No one helped _him._

**2.**

Klaus knew that nobody was looking for him. 

It was typical, he thought bitterly, that his family didn't notice him. It was so like them, misinterpreting him in the worst ways- when they noticed him, it was never how he wanted them to, when he wanted to remain hidden, they sought him out, when he wanted so so desperately for them to _see_ him, it was like he'd never existed in the first place.

Klaus was loud and he thought that maybe, maybe they would notice that it wasn't loud anymore and wonder, _hey, where's Klaus?_ But Klaus was also an addict and annoying and so if anybody did notice he was gone, they would probably assume that he was off getting high or be grateful for the silence, because his siblings were assholes like that.

Klaus wasn't even sure if Pogo would give a damn, and the day that a monkey decides you're worthless is the day that you realize you've been worthless for far longer than you thought.

Klaus is sassy when they burn him because at first it's funny. They didn't listen to his pleading, they didn't listen to his _no no please no I don't know anything you've go to believe me you've got the wrong brother please _and it's a joke to spite them. It's petty and it's so incredibly _him_ that he feels pride for a split second, before he feels the pain of a lighter against the inside of his wrist and god, that hurts. Is this how his cigarettes feel when he lights them? The last of the drugs left in his system make him think that maybe, the next time he lights up, he should apologize to the blunt.__

__When Klaus keeps being sassy, it's not because it's funny. At that point, it's the last part of him he can hold on to, because he can't count on anyone else right now and he isn't exactly the most reliable. He's a tricky bastard and he still won't give up the information (which he never knew in the first place, he fucking told them) and he's being sassy because if anything, he's consistent and he has to do something to keep his mind off the bleeding Russian woman near the window._ _

__He uses his powers because Ben tells him to, and Ben's there so he listens. He's not sure if Ben counts as someone who cares, because they argue a lot even if the fights are mostly little and he's really the only person who can see Ben so Klaus thinks maybe its more Ben feeling obligated to help his only connection to the living than Ben wanting to help his brother because he loves him. Which kind of sucks, because Klaus is fairly certain that, if he thought he remembered how to, he would love Ben._ _

__More pain, and then more and then more. He doesn't remember it, but he does. It's there with him and it haunts him despite the fact that he can't remember what really happened. Just pain. A brief flash of water in his lungs, which he thinks he laughed off. Then more pain._ _

__And then, someone outside. He got their attention somehow- his heart beating so hard and loud and fast that he thought he might actually burst, just explode right there in his bloodied desk chair, because holy shit someone was there and they were looking for him and please god oh god NOTICE ME I'M HERE._ _

__The person who found him was not one of his siblings. It was Diego's cop friend, Patch. She had found him by mistake, he found out later, searching for Five and instead getting him. But she was the most beautiful person Klaus had ever seen, and he cried as she undid his binds. He wasn't even sad. Just scared. Relieved. At this point, sobbing was an emotion._ _

__He crawled out through the vents, too desperate to leave to think about how Patch herself would do the same. Turns out she died. Klaus feels terrible, because he knows it's his fault._ _

__Klaus wishes he had at least stayed and died with her._ _

__

__**3.** _ _

__He felt so much. He felt so little. He wanted to feel less._ _

__Klaus didn't know why he had gone back to the suitcase after Dave died instead of standing up in the trenches and letting himself be target practice, but he supposed that it was because he was a coward._ _

__There were so many names he was calling himself, but coward hurt the most._ _

__No words existed to explain how violently he felt like he was being crushed, how open and bloody and gaping the wound in his heart was. It was that heavy feeling behind your rib cage you got when you were nervous or sad or dreading something, only it was multiplied by a thousand and it was eating him from the inside out with no remorse. Klaus didn't care if he was making a scene, if he was sobbing on the ground at a bus stop in twenty-fucking-nineteen, because he might be here right now but Vietnam still raged in his chest and it was leaving no survivors._ _

__Klaus had survived again, and he didn't think there was ever a time that he had wished more for that to not be true._ _

__

__**4.** _ _

__When Luther said that he wished he was like Klaus, Klaus refuted the statement with a weak, dead smile and a soft "No, you don't."_ _

___Klaus_ wished he wasn't like Klaus, but that wasn't new. Even sitting with Luther was something that he would rather not be doing, because Klaus knew that Luther was smashed and he was upset and Klaus was a pair of ears that would listen and a pair of hands that would hopefully hand him drugs. Despite the fact that Klaus had been clean for days._ _

__And, big fucking shocker, nobody noticed. And when he told them, they had the gall to call him a liar. Klaus almost hated himself enough to wish that he _was_ lying._ _

__Luther got worked up and wanted to leave, and when Klaus tried to stop him, he got mad. He put his huge hand around Klaus' skeletal throat and squeezed and lifted him, pressing him into the wall with a look of fury and confusion and hurt morphing his expression into the complete opposite of Number One._ _

__For a brief moment, Klaus thought that maybe Luther would tighten his grip and kill him._ _

__For a longer moment, Klaus wished so badly that he would._ _

__And then he was thrown across the room, landed on his back, and Luther left and holy shit that fucking _hurt_ , and Klaus thought maybe his spine was bruised._ _

__Ben was there, of course, he always was, but other than that,_ _

__he was alone._ _

__**5.** _ _

God was a sassy preteen on a bike, and she didn't _like_ him.

It wasn't even for a good reason, either. She didn't dislike him for the shit he'd done or the drugs or how many times he'd fucked up. No, she hated him for being _annoying_ , which hurt, and was not at all a good reason for depriving him of finally dying.

When Klaus woke up on the floor of the club, with the lights flashing and music thumping and everyone staring down at him, he was angry. He was so so angry because why couldn't he just die? It made sense now, why the OD's had never gotten to him, and it was maddening. He didn't deserve this, didn't even want this, and now it was being thrown at him out of spite, because God was just a dick like that. 

And nobody knew. Nobody was even there. The person he had followed to the club with the intention of helping, the person who had, an hour before, been pressing him into a wall with fury on his face, had fucking left. Luther was probably so high that he hadn't even realized his brother was (temporarily) dead on the floor, and suddenly Klaus was beginning to understand the anger his siblings felt when he himself was on drugs. But he was still angry. 

He almost said fuck it, almost stopped caring, but Ben was there to make him give, begrudgingly, just around half a shit about Luther. So he got up, waved his 'goodbye' hand at the crowd, and promptly left. He and Ben fought, and he walked through Ben, because fuck him, and it was cold but he didn't regret it because he was petty and trying to make a point. And then he went back home and found Luther having sex with a furry, which made him feel a lot better because wasn't that just the funniest fucking thing? 

But he was still angry, and still alone.

_**+1.** _

Klaus needs help sometimes. Actually, scratch that- he needs help all the goddamn time, because somehow he manages to continuously get himself into these less-than-desirable situations. 

What sucks even more than the shit that happens to him is the fact that nobody is ever there to help him.

But now, he isn't really even the one that needs help. It's Vanya, poor Vanya, who needs help. She's locked up, in a cage, thanks to fucking Luther, and Klaus really wants to make a Plant of the Apes reference but now really isn't the time and it would be counterproductive. But Vanya needs help, and Klaus also needs help, because looking at her locked up is sending him to dark places, bringing up repressed memories, and he needs help because Vanya needs to get out and he can't achieve that by being the only person who believes in her.

And everyone is fighting, everyone is against Luther, and Klaus thinks that maybe, something is happening here. That they're standing up against big brother and they'll win and help Vanya and everything will be okay. 

Except then Luther is ushering them away and Allison isn't letting him touch her but she goes anyway, looking furious but giving up. And Diego turns too, and Klaus just

stands there.

And he is furious.

"You're just like dad," he says. His voice is low and calm but still full of so much anger, and Luther turns to look at him. Diego and Allison pause too, staring at him.

Luther looks at Klaus, stern and reproachful. "No, I'm not. This is for-"

Klaus gives a humorless laugh, cutting off his brother. "-for her own good?" he asks, raising his eyebrows. "Yeah, familiar words, Reginald. Old man said that to me too." His chest is hot with rage, and he thinks he's trembling. He looks over at Vanya, who is pawing, scratching at the door, she is crying and screaming and they can't hear her. His breaths don't come as easily anymore. 

Vanya's face is replaced with his own. He watches his younger self mouth desperate pleads for freedom, pound at the door, cry and cry and cry and cry. Klaus forces himself to look away before it becomes too real to deal with.

He stares Luther right in the eyes. "I would plead with him to let me out. I would scream and cry and I was terrified but _it was for your own good, Number Four, you really must learn to conquer your fears of the dead, and isn't a dark and isolated Mausoleum the perfect place for exposure therapy?_ Dad would lock me up for hours, days sometimes. The dead wouldn't leave me alone. I needed help and I didn't, I never got it. Dad said it was for my own good, yeah? But it fucked me up, Luther. It fucked me up so bad and the only time I was ever calm again was when I was high or drunk or OD-ing in a back alley." He took a step closer. "So don't you dare tell me that this is for her own good, because this-" he gestured wildly to the cage behind him, "this? Is only going to make things worse. It's going to fuck her up and it's not going to do anything good and I know because it happened to me. And I am not letting you do the same thing to Vanya because she is _good_ and _pure_ and _our sister_ and she doesn't deserve it."

Klaus finished in a huff and turned back to the cage, turned back to Vanya. He walked up to the door and tugged. His pulled at the wheel, trying to turn it, and after a moment he felt a large hand on his shoulder. "Klaus-" said Luther, and his voice said everything. He still wanted to keep her locked up.

Klaus tensed, and he violently shrugged Luther's hand off of his shoulder. In the calmest, most terrifying voice he could muster, he said, "Luther. Believe me when I say that I do not care for you as much as I do Vanya. You either fuck off and let me do this, or I will fight you. And you can fight me back, and maybe you can kill me." He smiled ruefully. "But it won't last. And then I can try again."

Something in his voice must have scared Luther, because suddenly the hand was gone. And then Allison and Diego were next to him, both avoiding looking at him, and Ben was there too, and he was glowing blue, and they were all pulling at the wheel. They pulled and pulled and pulled and then,

it gave way.

And Vanya was falling out and Klaus caught her and she sobbed into his chest, cheek pressed up against his dog tags and she looked relieved and terrified and remorseful and god, he knew that expression all too well. 

"I'm sorry!" she sobbed, and it was so desperate that it came out nearly as a scream. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean any of it, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so so so sorry-"

Klaus shushed her, wrapped his arms around her, sank to the ground so that they were kneeling and she was partially in his lap. He let her cry, and he held on to her, pressing his cheek against her hair. "It's okay," he said, his voice as soft and warm and comforting as he could make it. "It's okay, I'm here, Klaus is here, I'm not going to let anyone hurt you. You're safe, it's okay, we forgive you."

Vanya let out another sob, clutching at his shirt as if he were a lifeline. And then Klaus looked up at his siblings, and Diego and Allison and Ben, who were staring down at him, eyes wide and looking sorry and scared and like they wanted to go to Vanya but weren't sure if they could. He looked at them and they looked back.

" _Thank you_ ," he mouthed.

They nodded back at him.


End file.
